1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the treating of solutions to obtain antimony values, and more particularly to recovering these antimony values as antimony sulfides.
2. The Prior Art
Numerous ore bodies exist which possess considerable amounts of arsenic and antimony, and various processes have been developed to recover these values. These processes are primarily dependent upon the primary recovery mechanisms employed for recovering the more abundant mineral values in the ore bodies. U.S. Pat. No. 2,348,360 to Reed discloses a method of recovering minerals from ores comprising copper, bismuth, tin, mercury, antimony, arsenic, and others by leaching the ore and solublizing the various metal sulfide components, and then sequentially oxidizing the various metal sulfides by means of air and sulfur dioxide. The metal sulfides are then recovered by means of precipitation and flotation.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,528,004 to Bassett describes a process for recovering arsenic from complex arsenic sulfides by roasting the ore in the presence of sufficient air in order to oxidize the arsenic to arsenous oxide while minimizing any oxidation of the sulfur.
No process is known which is capable of highly selective recovery of antimony sulfides from solutions which comprise antimony sulfides and arsenic sulfides. The process of the present invention effects such a separation, and thereby produces a valuable product from what is generally considered to be a waste product stream.